Henderson, NV - I recently took up the great sport of golf and decided to play over the Thanksgiving holiday. Rhonda & I were visiting her parents in Las Vegas, so I made arrangements to tee off at a course in nearby Henderson, a sprawling suburb consisting of mile after mile of new homes, strip malls and desert landscaping.

I arrived at the Desert Willows golf course about an hour early.  The first order of business was to rent a golf cart, which is half the fun of golf for me!  I gave the guy my deposit and he pointed me towards the area where the golf carts were kept. The carts were all lined up end to end in several rows, about 15 or so carts in each row. I got in my cart at the end of a row, turned it on, set the position of the forward/reverse handle and stepped on the gas. A loud smashing sound pierced the quiet afternoon and every single person in my field of vision turned and looked at me. I had screwed up. Instead of putting the cart in reverse, I mistakenly selected forward, so that when I stepped on the gas, I slammed into the entire row of carts in front of me. Whoops. Luckily there was no damage, except to my pride as at least 30 people now suspected that I was a complete idiot. But wait, there was more embarrassment to come.

I shrugged off the cart incident and decided to go hit a bucket of balls at the driving range, as my tee-off time was not for another hour. So I went to the ball dispensing machine, inserted my token, and out came 50 golf balls. Fifty golf balls that were now all over the place, rolling away in all directions on the ground. At least a dozen guys were now scrambling to avoid the steadily advancing sea of golf balls headed their way. All were forced to drop what they were doing and start picking up my golf balls, lest they trip over one of them and break their neck. I had screwed up yet again. This time, I forgot to place the BUCKET under the ball dispenser. With no bucket to contain them, the balls came spewing out of the machine and onto the ground, wreaking havoc among those golfers with the misfortune of being downhill from me. Those who may have suspected I was an idiot before, because of the cart incident, had no doubt now.

This was the first time I had golfed on my own, and the golf course put me with a threesome of the three most normal guys in the world. Their names were Bob, Mack and Joe. And all three of them were excellent local golfers. I feared that I would be paired up with guys who were much better than me (not hard to do) and that fear was realized as the entire day went like this: Bob-smack, great drive, on the green, Mack-smack, great drive, on the green, Joe-smack, great drive, on the green. Me-thump, 15 yards, grounder to the right. And so it went. Luckily, Bob, Mack & Joe were swell guys who didn=t mind my many golf indiscretions and even gave me a few pointers.

Golf is a great sport if for no other reason than it will humble any man.